Part 7

ISAB. Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet, For ev'ry pelting petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.

This fine sentiment, which nevertheless contains a very obvious fault in the mode of expressing it, appears to have been suggested by the following lines in Ovid's _Tristia_, lib. ii., that Shakspeare might have read in Churchyard's translation:

"Si quoties peccant homines sua fulmina mittat Jupiter, exiguo tempore inermis erit."

SCENE 2. Page 240.

ISAB.. Merciful heaven! Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, Than the soft myrtle.

There is much affinity between the above lines and these in Persius, sat. ii.:

"Ignovisse putas, quia, cum tonat, ocyus ilex Sulfure discutitur sacro, quam tuque domusque?"

But although there were two or three editions of that author published in England in the reign of Elizabeth, he does not appear to have been then translated.

SCENE 2. Page 243.

ISAB. ... prayers from _preserved_ souls, From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate To nothing temporal.

Here is no metaphor from _preserved fruits_, as Warburton fancifully conceives. _Preserved_ is used in its common and obvious acceptation. Isabella alludes to the prayers of her fellow nuns in addition to her own.

SCENE 2. Page 246.

ANG. O cunning _enemy_, that, to catch a saint, With saints dost bait thy hook!

_Enemy_ is here used for the _Devil_. See before in p. 62, 63.

SCENE 4. Page 260.

ISAB. ... Sir, believe this, I had rather give my body than my soul.

It is Isabella's purpose to give an evasive or ambiguous answer to Angelo's strange question, and she accordingly does so. Or, if it have any meaning, it may be "I would even consent to your terms if I could save my soul, or if my soul did not thereby incur perdition."

ACT III.

SCENE 1. Page 272.

DUKE. ... merely thou art _Death's fool_; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, And yet run'st toward him still.

And in _Pericles_, Act III. Scene 2, "to please the _fool and death_." One note may serve for both these passages.

Dr. Warburton had conceived an allusion in the first speech to certain characters of _death and the fool_ in the old _moralities_, in which, most unquestionably, they are not to be found, at least, in any which now remain. It is in this place that the latter part of Mr. Steevens's note on the passage in _Pericles_ should have been introduced, with the following additional circumstances that had probably escaped the learned commentator's recollection; that his informant concerning the skeleton character at the fair remembered also to have seen another personage in the habit of a fool: and that arriving when the performances at the booth were finished for the evening, he could not succeed in procuring a repetition of the piece, losing thereby the means of all further information on the subject. It is therefore probable that the remainder of Dr. Warburton's note is correct, although he may have erred in his designation of this mummery. What connection the subject in question has with the old initial letter of _death and the fool_, and the _dance of death_, is shown in a note to _Love's labour lost_, vol. v. p. 316, and in another on the passage in _Pericles_, both of which should have been incorporated with the present.

Mr. Ritson, in correcting a remark made by the ingenious continuator of Ben Jonson's _Sad shepherd_, has inaccurately stated that the figures in the initial letter were "actually copied from the margin of an old missal." The letter that occurs in Stowe's _Survey of London_, edit. 1618, 4to, is only an enlarged but imperfect copy from another belonging to a regular dance of death used as initials by some of the Basil printers in the sixteenth century, and which, from the extraordinary skill that accompanies their execution, will ever rank amongst the finest efforts in the art of engraving on blocks of wood or metal. Most of the subjects in this dance of death have undoubtedly been supplied by that curious pageant of mortality which, during the middle ages, was so great a favourite as to be perpetually exhibited to the people either in the sculpture and painting of ecclesiastical buildings, or in the books adapted to the service of the church: yet some of them but ill accord with those serious ideas which the nature of the subject is calculated to inspire. In these the artist has indulged a vein of broad and satirical humour which was not wholly reserved for the caricaturists of modern times; and in one or two instances he has even overleaped the bounds of decency. The letter in Stowe's _Survey_ is the only one that appears to have been imitated from the above alphabet; and as it throws some light on that part of the Duke's speech which occasioned the present note, it is here very accurately copied. It is to be remembered that in most of the old _dances of death_ the subject of the fool is introduced: and it is, on the whole, extremely probable that some such representation might have suggested the image before us.

SCENE 1. Page 285.

CLAUD. ... and the delighted spirit To bathe in _fiery floods_, or to reside In thrilling regions of _thick-ribbed ice_; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And _blown with restless violence_ round about The pendant world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine _howling_!----

It is difficult to decide whether Shakspeare is here alluding to the pains of hell or purgatory. May not the whole be a mere poetical rhapsody originating in the recollection of what he had read in books of Catholic divinity? for it is very certain that some of these were extremely familiar to him. Among them he might have seen a compilation on the pains of hell, entitled _Examples howe mortall synne maketh the synners inobedyentes to have many paynes and dolours within the fyre of hell_; black letter, no date, 12mo, and chiefly extracted from that once popular work, the _Sermones discipuli_, which contains at the end a promptuary of examples for the use of preachers. From this little volume it may be worth while to select the following passage, as according in some degree with the matter of Claudio's speech:--"he tolde that he sawe in hell a torment of an _yzye ponde_ where the soules the whiche therin were tormented cryed so horryble that they were herde unto heven," sign. B. iij. "And the sayde beest was upon a ponde full of _strong yse_, the which beest devoured the soules within his wombe in suche maner that they became as unto nothynge by the tormentes that they suffred. Afterwarde he put them out of his wombe _within the yse of the sayde ponde_," sign. G. iij. "The caytyve was in syke wyse, for she myght not helpe herself, the whiche herde terryble cryes and _howlynges of soules_," sign. H. And again, "And the devyll was bounde by every joynture of all his membres with great chaynes of yron and of copre brennyng. And of great torment and vehement woodnes whereof he was full he turned hym from the one syde unto the other, and stretched out his handes in the multytude of the sayde soules, and toke them, and strayned them in lykewyse as men may do a clustre of grapes in theyr handes for to make the wyne come forth. And in such maner he strayned them that he eyther brake theyr heedes, or theyr fete, or handes, or some other membres. Afterward _he syghed and blewe and dysperpeled the sayde soules_ into many of the tormentes of the fyre of hell," sign. H. iiij.

The following lines from the sixth book of Phaer's Virgil might have furnished some materials on the occasion:

"... some _hie in ayer_ doth hang in pinnes Some fleeting ben in _floods_, and deepe in gulfes themselves they tier Till sinnes away be _washt, or clensed cleer with purgin fire_."

In the old legend of _Saint Patrick's purgatory_ mention is made of a lake of ice and snow, into which persons were plunged up to their necks; and in the _Shepherd's calendar_, chap, xviii. there is a description of hell as "the rewarde of them that kepen the X comaundements of the Devyll," in in which these lines occur:

"... a _great froste_ in a water rounes And after a _bytter wynde_ comes Whiche gothe through the soules with yre; Fendes with pokes pulle theyr flesshe ysondre, They fyght and curse, and eche on other wonder."

Chaucer, in his _Assemblie of foules_, has given an abridgement of Cicero's dream of Scipio; and speaking of souls in hell, he says:

"And breakers of the lawe, sothe to saine And likerous folke, after that they been dede _Shull whirle about the world_ alway in paine Till many a world be passed."

It was not until the seventh century that the doctrine of purgatory was confirmed, when "they held that departed souls expiated their sins by _baths_, _ice_, _hanging in the air_, &c.," says a curious writer on this subject. See Douglas's _Vitis degeneris_, 1668, 12mo, p. 77.

With respect to the much contested and obscure expression of _bathing the delighted spirit in fiery floods_, Milton appears to have felt less difficulty in its construction than we do at present; for he certainly remembered it when he made Comus say,

"... one sip of this Will _bathe_ the drooping _spirits in delight_ Beyond the bliss of dreams."

SCENE 2. Page 295.

ELB. Bless you good _father friar_.

DUKE. And you good _brother father_.

Mr. Tyrwhitt remarks that _father friar_ is a blunder, and so indeed the Duke from his answer seems to consider it. Yet friars have often been addressed in this way; and a few pages further Escalus calls the Duke _father_, who had just been introduced to him as a _friar_. The Duke, indeed, soon after uses the term _brother_ when speaking of himself. Whilst the passage quoted by Mr. Steevens gives support to Mr. Tyrwhitt's observation that _friar_ is a corruption of the French _frere_, it seems to disprove his assertion that Elbow's phrase is erroneous.

SCENE 2. Page 298.

LUCIO. What, is there none of _Pygmalion's images, newly made woman_, to be had now, for putting the hand in the pocket, and extracting it clutch'd?

None of the explanations of this speech are satisfactory, but least of all such part of a note by the author of these remarks, as refers to the _picklock_, which has been better accounted for by Mr. Ritson. It is probable, after all, that Lucio simply means to ask the clown if _he has no newly-coined money wherewith to bribe_ the officers of justice, alluding to the portrait of the queen.

SCENE 2. Page 308.

ESCAL. This would make mercy _swear and play the tyrant_.

The old belief certainly was that tyrants in general swore lustily; but here seems to be a particular allusion to the character of Herod, in the mystery of _The slaughter of the innocents_, formerly acted by the city companies in their pageants, and of which those for Chester and Coventry are still preserved in the British Museum. In this curious specimen of our early drama, Herod is made to swear by Mahound, by cockes blood, &c. He is uniformly in a passion throughout the piece; and this, according to the stage direction, "Here Erode ragis," is exemplified by some extraordinary gesticulation. See the notes of Messrs. Steevens and Malone on a passage in _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 2.

SCENE 2. Page 310.

DUKE. ... and now is he _resolved_ to die.

Mr. Reed has certainly adduced an instance which proves that _resolved_ occasionally means _satisfied_, and we still talk of resolving difficulties, or a question in arithmetic; but in the passage before us it seems rather to signify _resolute_, _firm_, _determined_. Thus the allegorical romance of _Le chevalier deliberé_ was translated into English in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, under the title of _The resolved gentleman_; and into Spanish by that of _Il cavalero determinado_.

ACT IV.

SCENE 1. Page 318.

ISAB. And that I have _possess'd_ him.

In the same sense Shylock says

"I have _possess'd_ your grace of what I purpose."

It were better that Shakspeare should be thus made his own commentator where it can be done, than that he should be explained by quotations from other authors.

SCENE 1. Page 319.

DUKE. ... volumes of report Run with these false and most contrarious _quests_ Upon thy doings.

It is presumed that the sense of _messengers_ annexed to this word by Mr. Ritson cannot be maintained, but that the very line he refers to establishes it to be _searches_, _inquiries_. Mr. Malone's note is, of the others, the most satisfactory. The Duke alludes to the false and various conclusions that result from investigating the actions of men high in office. There is an old pamphlet with the whimsical title of _Jacke of Dover, his quest of inquiry, or his privy search for the veriest foole in England_, 1604, 4to.

SCENE 1. Page 321.

DUKE. Sith that the justice of your title to him Doth _flourish_ the deceit.

That is, _decorate an action that would otherwise seem ugly_. Two metaphors have already been suggested; a third remains to be stated. _Flourish_ may, perhaps, allude to the ornaments that embellish the _ancient_ as well as modern books of penmanship. There are no finer specimens of beautiful writing extant than some of the reign of Elizabeth, who herself wrote a very elegant Italian hand in the early part of her life.

SCENE 2. Page 322.

PROV. ... and your deliverance with an _unpitied_ whipping; for you have been a notorious bawd.

Mr. Steevens makes _unpitied_, _unmerciful_; it is rather _a whipping that none shall pity_, for the reason that immediately follows.

SCENE 2. Page 334.

PROV. Pardon me, good father, it is against my oath.

This is a very different provost from one of whom Fabian in his _Chronicle_, p. 187, relates the following story: "In the thyrde yere of the reigne of this Philip, _the provost of Paris_, having in his prison a Picard, a man of greate riches, whiche for felony or like crime, was judged to be hanged. The sayde provost for great benefit to him done and payment of great summes by the sayd Pycard, tooke an other poore innocent man, and put him to death, in steede of the sayd Pycarde. Of the whiche offence whan due proofe of it was made before the kynges counsayle, the sayde provoste for the same dede was put unto like judgement."

SCENE 3. Page 335.

CLO. First, here's young master Rash, he's in for _a commodity of brown paper and old ginger_.

The nefarious practice of lending young men money in the shape of goods which are afterwards sold at a great loss, appears to have been more prevalent in the reign of Elizabeth than even at present. It is very strongly marked in Lodge's _Looking glasse for London and Englande_, 1598, where a usurer being very urgent for the repayment of his debt is thus answered, "I pray you, sir, consider that my losse was great by the commoditie I tooke up; you know, sir, I borrowed of you forty pounds, whereof I had ten pounds in money, and thirtie pounds in _lute strings_, which when I came to sell againe, I could get but five pounds for them, so had I, sir, but fifteene pounds for my fortie: In consideration of this ill bargaine, I pray you, sir, give me a month longer." But this sort of usury is much older than Shakspeare's time, and is thus curiously described in one of the sermons of Father Maillard, a celebrated preacher at Paris at the end of the fifteenth century, and whose style very much resembles that of John Whitfield. "Quidam indigens pecunia venit ad thesaurarium supra quem fuerunt assignata mille scuta; dicit thesaurarius, Ego dabo tibi, sed pro nunc non habeo argentum; sed expectes usque ad quindecim dies. Pauper dicit, Non possum expectare; respondet thesaurarius, Dabo tibi unam partem in argento et alia in mercantiis: et illud quod valebit centum scuta, faciet valere ducenta. Hic est usura palliata." _Sermo in feriam_, iiii. _de passione_.

SCENE 3. Page 337.

CLO. ... _ginger_ was not much in request, for the old women were all dead.

This spice was formerly held in very great repute, and especially among elderly persons. Sir Thomas Elyot in his _Castle of health_, 1580, 12mo, says, it comforts the head and stomach, and being green and well confectioned, quickens remembrance, if it be taken in a morning fasting. Henry Buttes, who wrote a whimsical book entitled _Dyet's dry dinner_, 1599, 12mo, speaks much in its praise, and says that being condite with honey it "warmes olde mens bellyes." In Ben Jonson's masque of _The metamorphosed gipsies_, a country wench laments the being robbed of "a dainty race of _ginger_;" and in the old play of _The famous victories of Henry the fifth_, a clown charges a thief with having "taken the great race of ginger, that bouncing _Besse_ with the jolly buttocks should have had." In Beaumont and Fletcher's _Knight of the burning pestle_, the citizen's wife gives a man who had been soundly beaten some _green ginger_ to comfort him. Ginger was used likewise to spice ale. In Lodge's _Looking glasse for London and England_, the clown says, "Ile tell you, sir, if you did taste of the ale, all _Ninivie_ hath not such a cup of ale, it floures in the cup, sir, by my troth I spent eleven pence, besides _three rases of ginger_." The numerous virtues of this root are likewise detailed in Vennor's _Via recta ad vitam longam_.

SCENE 3. Page 342.

PROV. One _Ragozine_, a most notorious pirate.

Some attempt to elucidate this name has been made in the first note to the Merchant of Venice, into which it is rather improperly introduced. Mr. Heath had supposed that _Ragozine_ was put for _Ragusan_, _i. e._ a native of the city of _Ragusa_ on the gulf of Venice, famous for its trading vessels; but it was incumbent on that gentleman to have shown that the inhabitants of the above city were _pirates_. This however would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible; for, on the contrary, Rycaut, in his _State of the Ottoman empire_, has expressly declared that the _Ragusans_ never offered injury; but that, on receiving any, they very patiently supported it. Wherever Shakspeare met with the name of _Ragozine_, it should seem to be a _metathesis_ of the French _Argousin_, or the Italian _Argosino_, _i. e._ an officer or lieutenant on board a galley; and, as Menage conjectures, a corruption of the Spanish _Alguasil_. See Carpentier, _Suppl. ad gloss. Dufresne_, under the word _Argoisillo_.

ACT V.

SCENE 1. Page 358.

ISAB. ... but let your reason serve To make the truth appear, where it seems hid; _And hide the false, seems true_.

The apparent difficulty in the last line proceeds from its elliptical construction; yet the meaning is sufficiently obvious. Isabella requests of the Duke to exert his reason _to discover_ truth where it seems hid, and _to suppress_ falsehood _where it_ has the semblance of truth. _Hide_ is, doubtless, a licentious word, but was used for the reason suggested by Mr. Malone.

SCENE 1. Page 375.

LUCIO. Show your sheep-biting face, and be _hang'd an hour_.

There would have been little reason for dissenting from Mr. Henley's ingenious note, in which he supposes that this expression refers to the _pillory_, but for the subsequent remark by Lucio, "this may prove worse than _hanging_." It seems therefore more probable that "hang'd an hour" alludes to the _time_ usually allotted for torturing the miserable object of the barbarous punishment by suspension, which is justly execrated by Randle Holme as "a dog's death," and always excites in the spectator a strange mixture of ludicrous and shocking sensations. It dishonours the living more than it degrades the criminal. The Turkish bowstring were much less offensive to the feelings of humanity: but the more solemn and decorous infliction of death, (if inflicted it must be,) would, as in military cases, be the stroke of the bullet, provided such a measure could be adopted without offending the soldier's honour. The pre-eminent mercy of the English law disdains to augment the horrors of premature dissolution by personal pain and torture; its object is to prevent or diminish the commission of the crime. On this principle, one could wish that, on the close of the usual necessary and consolatory preparation for death, some mode of stupefying the offender were adopted; that no sensation of torture on his part might be felt, nor any other on that of the spectator, than a satisfaction that the sentence of the law had been fulfilled. For this digression no apology can be necessary. As to Mr. Daines Barrington's supposition, that "the criminal was _suspended in the air by the collistrigium or stretch-neck_," a very little reflection will suffice to show that it is founded in error. Such a process would in _half an hour's_ time most effectually prevent a repetition of the ceremony. The _collistrigium_ was so called from the _stretching out or projection of the neck_ through a hole made in the pillory for that purpose, or through an iron collar or _carcan_ that was sometimes attached to the _pillar_ itself. No punishment has been inflicted in so many different ways as that of the pillory; and therefore the following varieties of it have been thought worth exhibiting.

The first is from a manuscript of the Chronicle of Saint Denis, in the British Museum, Bibl. Reg. 16. G. vi. It was written in the thirteenth century. The second occurs in a manuscript of Froissart, preserved in the same collection. The third is copied from a print in Comenius's _Orbis pictus_, and furnishes a specimen of the _carcan_, the woman being confined to the pillar by an iron ring or collar. The fourth is from a table of the standard of ancient weights and measures in the exchequer, and shows the mode of punishing a forestaller or regrator in the time of Henry the Seventh. The fifth exhibits Robert Ockam in the pillory for perjury. The fact happened in the reign of Henry the Eighth, but the cut is copied from Fox's _Martyrs_, published long afterwards. The sixth and last figure represents an ancient pillory that formerly stood in the market-place of the village of Paulmy in Touraine. It is copied from a view of the castle of Paulmy in Belleforest's _Cosmographie universelle_, 1575, folio. Not long since there was remaining in the Section des halles at Paris an old hexangular building of stone, with open Gothic windows, through which appeared an iron circle or _carcan_, with holes for placing the hands and necks of several persons at the same time, in like manner as in the first and last figures. There is an engraving of it in Millin's _Antiquités nationales_, tom. iii. no. 34.

SCENE 1. Page 378.

DUKE. Being criminal in _double_ violation Of sacred chastity, and of promise-breach.

Mr. Malone thinks _double_ refers to Angelo's conduct to _Mariana_ and Isabel; but surely, however inaccurate the expression, it alludes to Angelo's _double_ misconduct to _Isabella_, in having attempted _her_ chastity, and violated his promise with respect to her brother. Thus in _Promos and Cassandra_:

"Thou wycked man, might it not thee suffice By worse than force to spoyle her chastitie, But heaping sinne on sinne against thy othe, Hast cruelly her brother done to death."

In Cinthio Giraldi's novel, it is "Vous avez commis _deux crimes_ fort grans, l'un d'avoir diffamé cette jeune femme, par telle tromperie que l'on peut dire que vous l'avez forcée: l'autre d'avoir fait mourir son frere contre la foy à elle donnée." Transl. by Chappuys, 1584.

SCENE 1. Page 385.

DUKE. Thy slanders I forgive; and therewithal Remit thy other _forfeits_: Take him to prison.